Chapter 8 Papa’s Condition
Papa’s Condition
I watched my father closely the next morning. A few cautious questions established that he had no memory of anything that had happened the night before. He was a little tired and cross, but that was not unusual, for he had waited up for us long past his preferred hour of retiring.
In the light of day, I began to think I had been a bit silly.
Of course he hadn’t died. He had merely fainted, and my machine had revived him.
Galvanic shocks would wake anyone up. No doubt in the dark, in my panic, I had missed the signs of him clinging to life.
Still, he likely would have died if I had not interfered.
It was a strange sensation, watching my family go about their business, knowing that it all could have come to an end.
In the days that followed, I felt myself fill with renewed love for them.
It was brave of us, in a way, how we lived as though this house was ours, instead of merely borrowed from a stranger on a lease of uncertain length.
I felt a new affection for my mother, a butterfly of a woman, frantic and brainless and beautiful.
For my father, I felt a great swell of gratitude each time I looked at him. His life was so precious to us all.
I loved them all, but it hurt . Every time I heard Lydia and Kitty’s footsteps thumping up and down the stairs, or watched Elizabeth and Jane read under their favorite tree in the garden, I felt a stab of guilt so profound that I wondered if it might do physical damage to my heart.
I almost hoped it would. Everything we had was so fragile, and I had been so careless.
I walked about in a storm of misery so intense I could hardly speak. I found solace only one place: within the pages of Reverend Quindley’s Admonishments for Godly Young Ladies .
It was exactly what I needed. Harry must have known that I would.
I suppose he saw flaws in my character that alarmed him even then.
How foolish I was not to turn to it before!
Here were answers for my questions, and corrections for my faults.
Even running my fingers down its table of contents, with headings like “On Modesty” and “On the Home” and “On Prayer,” could bring me solace.
I was not irredeemable. This book could repair me.
I could be the daughter and sister my family deserved.
I read it cover to cover, imagining Harry’s comforting hand on my shoulder, then read it again.
My sisters sighed and rolled their eyes as Quindley’s words filled my speech, but I ignored them.
They were simple women. They did not contain such depths of depravity as I did.
I had time for these new pursuits. The night after what happened with Papa, I went up to my laboratory, put everything away in crates, then came downstairs and pushed a chest in front of the secret door.
My final act was the hardest, but I knew I must. I took Cariad from my apron pocket, put him on the sill, and shooed him out the open window.
Then I closed it. I soon heard him tapping at the glass, but I put a pillow over my head and read Quindley’s until the sound went away.